Itunes 12.7 bug: every song is its own album

I fixed this issue (at least for now) when I went onto itunes on my PC, right-clicked on my device (iphone SE) and then clicked “sync”. I have well over 2000 tracks in my library so it took a while to back up and stuff, but when I checked (closed and re-open)

my music app, all my songs were in each respectful album.

Hope this helps!

Thanks man only downgrading to iTunes 12.6.xx did I manage to get my albums working again properly. Before this the only method I used is creating playlists in iTunes. But your method was an easy fix. ( Using Windows 10 PC and an iPhone 5c of course in 2018 🙂 )

This is also happening to me. I've tried copying the files to a different directory, completely removing all the metadata from the MP3 files using Tag&Rename, changing the album title and album artist and artist to all be the same -- mixed results. Sometimes it works, but nothing is repeatable. I have no idea, but it's incredibly annoying that Apple is forcing us to use iTunes to add music to our iPhones and iPads. Just let us copy the darned files over to the device and get rid of that stupid itunes database -- Windows explorer straight to the device or Finder copy straight to the device and be done with it. I am ready to just switch to another maker this has become so annoying and has been going on since the inception of the ipod.

Hey Apple: Fix This Issue Please!

Is this just me or is literally 5 months an absolute travesty that this is happening?! I had to switch to Apple because my Android is giving me issues and man, thank god I'm not staying because this is easily the stupidest bug I've ever seen. And five months with no fix?!

You cant be serious...... EVERY SINGLE TIME Apple has an update for my iPhone 6s i cringe wondering if its going to screw up my music again...... the worst was doing an update and typical sync and some error glitch Apple TOOK 2500 individual songs that were 110% mine... thats 2500 out of the 7000 i have on here. That “glitch” was 6 months ago and im still finding songs i want to listen to that are missing. Was on the phone with Apple for 6 hours and not a single bit of help to fix.

NOW this latest update is more infuriating bec yes, almost ALL my albums have been broken out into individual tracks appearing as albums making playback consistent a very frustrating issue...... and they havemt fixed it yet????? The best advice so far is to DELETE all of my Albums and just simply start over??? Do you have any idea how time consuming and tedious thats going to be dealing with 25gigs of music??

Hey APPLE please get yourselves together youre supposed to be “the best” yet these errors and issues are FAR TOO COMMON and it feels as if your moral hazard for this is “Oops ... sorry” leaving us to fix the issues caused by your glitches. Ive been ever so disappointed with the itunes/iphone only marriage for the last year with all the problems ive experienced andnif youre gonna make us toe the line by requiring a certain method which is incredibly time consuming in and of itself simply getting new music on my PC into itunes and playing the glitch lottery as new errors or music that simply wont add to my phone that day .... if youre gonna continue to force all your customers to ride a 1 way street then you should have your software and functionality in tip top shape.

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIX THIS LATEST GLITCH where all my songs are broken out to individual albums ... ive yet to see an update or patch to fix this. Im not going to all that work to delete over 75% of my music library off my phone just to have to turn around and re upload them in hopes i get all my sogs right and this doesnt happen yet AGAIN!

This is incredibly disappointing all these mistakes from a company that prides itselfnon flawless software and integration to have some of the most rudimentary software bugs constantly is mind blowing bec youre suppOsed to be APPLE!!

I agree and with their elitest attitude “Were Apple” this SHOULD NOT EVER BE HAPPENING im so frustrated as well and i tried the iphone route for 1 year and back to android bec of ridiculously simple silly bugs that are such an inconvenience to me and my music library

Hey btw is your music player skipping a lot like its on a CD or when searching for a song the music player just jumps back a screen or two before you can select a song or album?

Im using my iphone 6s strictly as an ipod now and its becoming a very unhappy experience anymore dealing with APPLE’s bugs and glitches in their ios updates that no matter how hard you try to avoid the update bec i have to delete more of my personal data memory for each update. I dont want to update right away sometimes but im forced too when postponing and it schedules the update for like 3am that night

I've found that the first time I add an album I own it does this -- every song is an album of its own. If I delete those songs and add them a 2nd time, then everything goes fine. I've consistently repeated this process. I don't know why doing it a 2nd time resolves the issue but it does -- but only for that album.

Apple: THIS IS A BUG ON CURRENT IOS DEVICES - PLEASE FIX THIS

Just to add to the technical details and offer some parting thoughts (because Apple will never fix this on their own nor will they do what's right by their customers):

Phone 6 Plus, IOS 11.3.1, 128GB, iTunes 12.7.4.80 Windows 64Bit -- This problem persists.

I also experienced the same things @Lightning78 posted - more than half of my personally owned files were "magically" deleted from my iPhone some time ago when I updated and had to start from scratch. It was highly frustrating that iTunes screwed up my database and removed a large amount of my music.

There's one app that is not on Android. I am about 60% sure my next mobile device will be Android based on how terrible iTunes is. Apple refuses to go with the industry and accept that people want control of their files that they own (at least rights to, some I do own because they're my recordings and I own all rights to them) and can copy onto their mobile devices. This isn't a problem with Android at all.

What's even more frustrating is the lack of support for the de facto standard open lossless audio codec that is used by 99% of people who care about audio quality -- and that is FLAC. It also supports 24-Bit Audio, which is nowhere near the vernacular of Apple.

Really it's this simple in order to fix your problem Apple:

1. Allow user's to manually copy their files over to their i-Devices (iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc.) using Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac.

2. Support FLAC (it would be great if you support 24-Bit Audio as well, but that may be asking the moon from you).

3. Get out of the way -- stop messing with user's experiences and forcing the iTunes store on people. If they want Apple Music and your services, make them better than the competition and make the integration painless for those who have their own files.

4. Better yet, allow 3rd party developers to build music/playback apps that are a direct replacement for iTunes. I bet you'll get a far better application from some of the leaders in this field like JRiver, Roon, and others. You'll also be the leader in Phone technology and not have the sunk costs of iTunes which is a piece of junk.

Not everyone is the same Apple, so stop treating us that way and make an application and system for playing back music that is truly revolutionary, not punishment for being stuck in your ecosystem. No more for me, I've had enough.

I had the same issue - purchased exactly 2 songs from Vaiana (muana) on my windows machine: #4 How Far I'll go and #7 You're welcome. It appears as two albums with each 1 song.

So for the #4 song, looking at album info it shows "Various Artists" as the Artist. For the #7 song Album Info the Artist field is empty. I simply copy & pasted "Various Artists" into the Album Info of the #7 song / Album and then they instantly merged into 1 album.

Weird thing is that on the other computer (macbook pro) it did correctly sort them.

Your first link references an eight year old thread, so clearly not all of this is new. When Apple introduced the Work & Movement features they chose to reuse the TIT1 field that had previously been used for Grouping. In other players the same field has been used for Mood or Subgenre. The iPhone doesn't handle things well if Work is filled in, but Movement isn't.

tt2

Agreed.

As the behavior persists as of iTunes for Windows/Mac (12.7.5.9) with iOS 11.4, it became apparent that this is intended behavior. As there isn't much information available from Apple on the open public channels - and I'm not inclined to go down the Development SDK rabbit hole at this time - one is left with trial-and-error research, assumptions, and/or speculations.

This got me thinking that perhaps previous iterations of iTunes and iOS Music did not fully incorporate the latest ID3Tag implementation (ex: ID3v2.4).

Altering ID3Tag metadata to incorporate Sort Artist/Album/Name and Work Name/Work Number/Movement seems to produce a desired result when using iTunes as a conduit (i.e. not the iTunes Library) to copy songs to the iDevice. I suspect that copying the songs from the iTunes Library may have been broken on previous dot releases of iTunes 12.7.x and/or iOS 11.x and the latest versions seem to address this.

I typically set my ID3Tag Grouping field to match the Genre field as this allows the song to be properly handled by a variety of players such as WMP, KODI, WinAMP, FooBar, hardware vehicle players (BT, SD, Line-In, etc.); and until now, iTunes.

It certainly would have been helpful if Apple had provided additional details as to what metadata revisions (ex: ID3v2.4) they support in iTunes, iOS Music Players, etc.

I don't think that Tags are causing the problem. This is reproducible in the following manner:

1 - Copy album files (mp3) to iPhone by dragging mp3 files from Windows Explorer into iTunes on Windows. The result is all songs are their own album. NB: the only way to tell is by looking at your phone using iTunes because iTunes on Windows shows everything as one album.

2 - Using iTunes on Windows, delete the tracks/album from iphone.

3 - Using ITunes on Windows add tracks back just like in step 1 above. This time, all tracks appear as one album.

I use only IDv3 tags and have my Tag manager set to delete all IDv2 tags. This has worked fine with iTunes and every other application I've used to date; only Apple has this problem now. Apple just started malfunctioning about 5 months ago and they refuse to address the problem.

I've been doing this now for the last 4 months once I figured out this painful workaround. It's been consistent no matter what I tried and that was even trying IDv2 Tags, messing with Grouping. Adding tracks with no tags then editing them in iTunes to see if it would group them all under one album. Nothing worked. There's just a software bug dealing with the local database and the one that's on your phone.

Apple needs to allow other software makers to produce music playback software that is a replacement for iTunes, just like Microsoft had to allow for decoupling Internet Explorer from Windows back when the EU filed suit in order to allow for Web Browser competition. Netscape never recovered, but at least we have a lot of Web Browser options these days. How has Apple gotten away with this? I think it's time for another EU suit, this time focused on Apple and iTunes.

Not quite following the approach used as it seems to indicate *it is* tag related. In any case, one can see the issues using the following approach:

1. Create two types of test albums: same artist album, multi-artist album (soundtrack, compilation).

2. Using a "comprehensive" tag editing application, remove all ID3Tag (frame) details.

3. Ensure that iTunes (Windows/Mac) settings/preferences are set to *not* obtain any ID3Tag details from external sources - i.e. disable all query, ratings, etc. Ideally, a new/clean/empty library on the latest version of iTunes.

4. Drag-and-drop the test albums to the "Automatically Add To iTunes" folder. Observe the results, review the tracks using "Get Info". Then purge the test albums.

5. Drag-and-drop the test albums directly to the iTunes Library - i.e. into the UI window. Observe the results, review the tracks using "Get Info".

6. Sync a iDevice (iPhone/iPad) running iOS 11.4 and observe the results in the iDevice Music app. Ideally, a new/clean/empty library on the latest version of iTunes. Ensure the iDevice Music app settings are set to *not* obtain ID3Tag details from external sources.

TEST 1

What are the results of using "Get Info" to populate the ID3Tag details. Populate "Song" - i.e. not switching to "Work Name".

TEST 2

What are the results of populating the fields that appear when "Work Name" is selected.

TEST 3

Using a "comprehensive" tag editing application, examine the ID3Tag details of the files in the iTunes Media folder. Not reported ID3Tag implementation (ex: ID3v1, ID3v2, etc.). Quit iTunes and use the tag editing application to alter these tags to include additional fields that are present in ID3v2, then editing again to include additional fields in ID3v4, etc.

Relaunch iTunes and observe the results in iTunes, cleanup the iDevice, copy the files back to the iDevices and observe the results.

TEST 4

Copy the test albums found in the iTunes Music folder elsewhere - i.e. iTunes version of the test albums. Remove the test albums from iTunes. Cleanup the iDevice - i.e. clean iDevice library.

Drag-and-drop the original test albums to the iDevice via the iTunes UI. Observe the results.

Drag-and-drop the iTunes version of the test albums to the iDevice via the iTunes UI. Observe the results.

I think I found a workaround - it appears that Apple Music app is trying to concatenate Album name and Artist Name and use it as Album label - and i suspect there is probably a length limit on this label. But this is just a theory. Workaround follows:

1. Load tracks to iOS device using iTunes

2. In iTunes - go into device Music Library and highlight tracks you just loaded.

3. Right click and select Add To Playlist / New Play List

4. Assign name to your new playlist.

Now you can use playlists instead of albums.

I have number of CD-ripped books and this workaround appears to work.

Still - wish Apple had better QA processes.